+(Intro) Today we have the memorial of St Teresa of Avila, a mystic and doctor of the Church. She reminds us that the Holy Spirit is ever bringing about renewal within the Church and religious communities so let us be aware of how we may need renewal in our own lives.
(After the gospel) Today’s gospel is appropriate for today’s memorial of St Teresa. Jesus tells the Pharisees of how they “pay no attention to judgment and to love for God” and tells the scholars of the law they are imposing heavy burdens on the people
In St Teresa’s time, her efforts at reform of the “Calced” or unreformed Carmelites were intent on stopping her efforts at reform. Her friend and ally, St John of the Cross was kidnapped and imprisoned. The superior of the newly reformed Carmelites and her closest friend Fr Gracian was put under house arrest. The papal nuncio to Spain described Teresa herself as a “restless, disobedient and contumacious gad-about, who under the cloak of piety has invented false doctrines, left the enclosure…against orders of the Council of Trent and her own superiors, and has gone about teaching…contrary to the injunctions of St Paul who said that women were not to teach.”
Personal or communal reform will face opposition, and it is prayer that will sustain us. St Teresa calls all of us to be persons of prayer so as to do whatever God may ask of us. So let us turn to our loving Lord, knowing that he is ever ready to help us in our own efforts at renewal.
Rom 2:1-11; Luke 11:42-46